


Doc Scratch Grants Stupid Wishes

by Astralune



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 10:03:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3606090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astralune/pseuds/Astralune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A somewhat irreverent summary of Homestuck to date (to the end of A6A6I4), written in the style of the book 'Zeus Grants Stupid Wishes'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act 1

So  
First there was the Trolls  
Who were kind of clever  
But not all that smart.  
And particularly lacking in vital skills  
Like architecture and competitiveness.  
You might not think these were terribly important  
But that is because you are not a TRUE GAMER.  
And all true gamers play a game called sBurb  
Or sGrub, or other things that start with S.  
It’s a very important letter.

Anyway, the Trolls tried to play sGrub  
And they were so bad at it  
Than your mum could beat them without even needing her lusus.  
Which is a kind of dog  
If dogs ate other trolls  
And raised you through childhood.  
So not like a dog at all.  
Except they are very loyal  
So I guess they are like dogs a bit.  
Anyway  
The Trolls were so bad at sGrub  
That it destroyed their entire race  
And you thought it was bad  
When you wiped the raid on the last attempt of the night.  
They were like OH MAN  
WE ARE SO TERRIBLE AT THIS  
WE DONT EVEN HAVE MOTHERS TO BLAME THIS ON.  
IF ONLY THERE WERE SOME WAY  
TO GO BACK IN TIME  
AND MAKE US MORE AGGRESSIVE AS A SPECIES  
AND MAYBE LEARN ABOUT SCAFFOLDING.  
THAT WOULD BE REALLY HELPFUL ABOUT NOW.

Fortunately for them  
Or not as the case may be  
Someone heard them  
And Doc Scratch was like HEY GUYS  
YOU WANNA DO THE THING?  
LETS DO THE THING.

So  
First there were the Trolls  
Who were kind of clever  
But not that smart.  
And particularly lacking in vital skills  
Like cooperation and speaking legibly.  
But competitiveness and architecture?  
Thier skills at these things were ON POINT.  
Because as kids they had to build their own Seussian house  
And also fight other kids and their dog-lususes.  
Or maybe dog-lusi.  
This made them somewhat better at playing sGrub  
But worse at being friends.  
Anyway, twelve of them played the game.  
And for a while it went really well  
Except that it went all wrong.  
Which is what Doc Scratch intended  
Back when he changed things.

Anyways, I should explain sGrub  
Or sBurb or sAbode or SimCity as appropriate  
Basically, it’s a game  
Where you kill everyone  
And make a new universe how you see fit  
Inside a giant frog.  
Frogs are very important. Frogs and Horses.  
It’s a thing.  
Also Doc Scratch is cheating at it.  
He’s trying to help his boss win forever or something.

So the Trolls fucked everything up  
And broke the new frog universe  
Which sucks, because the new universe  
Is OUR UNIVERSE.  
And the twelve Trolls became our constellations.

So  
First there were the humans  
Who were kind of clever  
But not that smart.  
And particularly lacking in vital skills  
Like empathy for others and sobriety.  
But faffing about instead of playing sBurb?  
Their skills at these things were ON POINT.  
Because John, who is one of the kids  
Seriously takes years  
and years  
and years and years  
just to get through the tutorial.  
Any of our mums could beat him at his own game  
Mostly because his own game is one of his own devising.  
It is called ‘everything is about me, John Egbert’.  
You don’t want to bother learning the game, trust me.

Anyway, the kids finally get into the game proper  
destroying Earth in the process  
as the fires of a thousand meteors scorch the surface.  
Sorry, Earth  
Things just weren’t meant to be  
Blame it on the Trolls, and their giant mutant frog.

Once in the game, the kids screw around some more.  
Mostly they’re fucked because they didn’t pay attention  
during the tutorial  
and now they don’t know how to bring up the map  
or find their quest log  
or how to prototype properly  
It is like if you let your little brother or sister  
Play on your world of warcraft main  
when all they had ever played  
was Mario Kart.

To be entirely fair, it must be stated  
that the Trolls had a hand as well  
in their abysmal performance  
as we soon shall see…


	2. Act 2

So  
The four kids were inside sBurb  
John we have already met  
But also, there was Dave  
Who has issues with sincerity  
Rose, who will struggle with drink  
And Jade, who mostly struggles  
With staying awake.  
(They are called The Beta kids  
But that will be later on.)  
Mostly, they mess up prototyping  
And accidentally create some things  
That will end up destroying the universe.  
Not in a ‘fire of a thousand meteors’ way  
But in a manner we will get to shortly.

Inside the game  
Our heroes has to work to solve puzzles  
To progress through their personalised worlds.  
Kind of like Myst, or Riven  
Or a Sierra game.  
Ultimately, this was to advance them  
To a chess world  
Fought over by chess pieces  
Representing the two sides:  
Prospit, land of sunshine and light rays  
And Derse, land of gloom and demise.  
(These names are more funny  
If you know the source material.)  
Collectively they fire the meteors  
That end up scorching Earth  
(A prime example of why Sir Isaac Newton  
Is the deadliest son of a bitch in space.)  
In theory, the kids should have been able  
To resolve this territorial dispute  
And move on to breeding frogs  
A much more important task for them.

In practise things were not so simple.  
Not for them, not for frogs  
And not for us.

The constellation trolls  
Having been completely fucked over  
Booted up Skype  
And started trolling the beta kids  
This is the height of hilarity  
Especially the part where they trick  
some of the beta kids into dying  
(They get better.  
Limited resurrection is just one of the complex systems  
This game world delights in not explaining.)  
Anyway, having usurped this ability to  
Communicate across universes for mum jokes  
The Trolls attempt, in their own way  
To help the Beta kids play.  
This is like if you took your little brother or sister  
Who has somehow equipped your main’s pants on their head  
And asked your uncle or aunt  
The one who posts ‘call for a pizza’ on Facebook  
To offer advice on how to play.  
But, somehow, more hilarious.  
Not in a murder way  
But an arguing with your future self way.

Anyways, the kids get to the battlefield  
But it’s already too late  
What they need to win  
Was never there.  
If not for the Trolls or Doc Scratch  
If they’d played the tutorial  
Things might have been different.  
But instead, they made Jack Noir  
Who decides that it’s time  
To really fuck shit up  
And starts killing everyone  
And destroying everything  
He can get his hands on.

Things seem pretty dire  
So the kids decide to embark  
On a time honored, universe spanning tradition:  
To cheat.  
In this case, by booting the assorted family members  
Away from the computer  
And loading an earlier save.

A Scratch, as they call it  
Resets the universe  
But not without changing a few of the random number seeds.  
And making a new set of players  
But we will get to them shortly.

Jack Noir, overcoming the burden of his name  
Discovers their plot, their scheme  
And arranges to escape to another universe,  
Arriving just as the constellation trolls  
Exultant in their victory over sGrub  
Are about to enter the human universe they created.  
(Yeah, he escaped back in time to their universe.  
Trust me, the headache hasn’t even begun yet.)  
He ruins everything for them  
Fucking everything over  
And sends them off to hide  
And Skype troll the Beta kids.

Meanwhile, the Beta kids, and the constellation trolls  
Having restrained their natural urge to murder each other  
(If not their natural urge to call each other doodoo heads)  
Have arranged to be catapulted  
Through the expansive void  
To where  
Their scratched universe begins anew  
To be seen next time…


	3. Act 2 Intermission 1

As hard as it may be to believe  
this is the part where things  
get really weird.  
Doc Scratch, it turns out  
does not just grant stupid wishes  
out of the goodness of hie cueball head.  
but is working in the service  
of one Lord English  
who claims to already be here.  
(The reality is more convoluted  
involving Doc Scratch’s efforts  
to engender the events  
that will bring Lord English into being.)  
This is why the trolls are bad at friendship  
And the humans are good at faffing about.  
EVERYTHING IS JUST AS PLANNED.  
Except for this narrative  
which might be slightly made up as we go along.

So.  
The Beta kids’ universe goes asplode  
and in the process empowers Doc Scratch  
charging up his Inscrutable Reserves  
and his Impenetrable Exposition guns  
and allows Lord English to be here  
and also to be Caliborn.  
That is Lord English’s other name.  
Caliborn, as we will see, is a dick.

He once was a player of sBurb  
a noted co-op character growing experience  
with his sister, Calliope.  
Except the kind of cooperation Caliborn had in mind  
was of the sister murdering type.  
He thinks he is just that good  
that he can solo this sucker.  
(The rules do not actually allow for this.  
Caliborn does not care. He is precisely the sort of monster  
who thinks the world should bend to his whims  
just because he wants it to.  
Naturally this attitude makes him a perfect candidate  
for apotheosis via this reality-bending game.)

Caliborn gets just enough help  
from the worst of the trolls  
to become Lord English  
at a point later in the narrative  
than we are going to cover.  
(Horsepause is the worst  
Primarily because horses have hooves  
and not paws, but also  
because I don’t know how this ends yet.)  
This enables him to be a threat  
to all reality  
and all universes  
contained within it.  
It’s possible he is a bad guy.  
(He is the worst of guys.)

Unfortunately for the Constellation trolls  
(who are now the only trolls left in existence)  
Aquarius decides that the best course of action  
is to murder as many trolls as he can  
and to destroy their ability to have baby trolls.  
No wonder he is of royal blood.  
This plan cannot fail.  
Except that it does.  
Virgo steps in and chainsaws him in half  
It is a just fate for Aquarius  
who otherwise would just whine  
about why nobody likes him  
(It is because he is horrible.)

Scorpio thinks this is an excellent time  
to go find Jack Noir  
(who is now Bec Noir  
and wields power even more great and terrible to imagine  
then before he decided to  
really fuck shit up)  
and probably die to him  
and lead him back to the rest of the trolls.  
Excellent plan.  
You thought they couldn’t top Aquarius’ plan, didn’t you?  
You were wrong.  
While plans are part of architecture, and of competing  
the trolls skipped class that day.  
Fortunately for the trolls, Libra saw how dumb this was  
and stopped Scorpio  
by the simple expedient  
of murdering her.  
Yay for troll culture!

Shortly thereafter  
The remaining Constellation trolls are riding the meteor bus  
through the void to the new, Alpha Kids’ universe.  
They are still the worst at making friends.  
Elsewhere, some Beta kids are sailing themselves  
through THE GAP OF THE FOURTH WALL  
to arrive at the same place.  
That is why all the exposition happens here.  
Because car trips are worst through interuniversal space.  
There is nothing to I Spy there.

Meanwhile Bec Noir  
having been crossed with an all powerful dog  
and become an even more all powerful murderous bastard  
sets his eyes on the tasty Alpha Kids’ universe  
glittering off in the distance  
like a shiny chew toy  
and decides that he would really like it to be his  
and then blow it up  
so now everyone is sailing through the void.  
It is like a void-sailing party here  
but with less booze  
and somewhat more murder.

It will take some time for them to arrive  
so we shall continue then…


	4. Act 3

When sBurb Scratches a game session  
it sets up a paradox loop for the players.  
Essentially, the players in either universe  
are the descendants of the players  
from the other one.  
sBurb thinks this is exceedingly clever  
and pats itself on the back for this.  
The Beta kids - John, Jade, Dave and Rose  
are, in a certain sense  
the parents of the Alpha kids  
Jake, Jane, Dirk and Roxy respectively.  
(Along with frog breeding, there is also some player breeding.  
It involves weird teleport machinery and is not fun at all.)  
Jake is somehow worse at empathy and better at narcissism  
than John could ever aspire to.  
Jane is kinda like Jade and kinda like John  
but also kind of not.  
(She is also set to inherit  
from Sea Hitler.)  
Dirk is like Dave, without the supporting environment  
that let Dave be cool, and able to express that he cares.  
Roxy is Rose, except drunk from the get go  
and totally has a thing for dirk, WONK  
(no one in this story  
has ever attended a typing class  
though to be fair, Roxy types well for someone  
perennially tipsy)  
These four Alpha Kids  
spend a lot of time  
trying to sort out their feelings  
about themselves and each other

The Beta kids, and the constellation trolls  
are engaged in much of the same thing  
while Caliborn decides  
that the best thing for him to do  
is to start trolling everyone else.  
Everyone in this tale is a master tactician  
and their plans zero in on their opponent’s weakness  
with exacting precision  
or so Caliborn believes of himself.  
He starts with demanding Dirk draw him porn  
of people HOLDING HANDS  
and moves on to interrogating the author of Homestuck  
for how to cheat harder  
and then to taking control of the narrative  
and acting out a version of events that is both  
closer to how he sees the world as being  
and more dumb than this summary.  
(It is EXCEEDINGLY interminable.)  
By now he has recruited Capricorn, somehow  
to assisting his cause  
of being the biggest horse’s ass in the multiverse.

Meanwhile  
everyone is about to arrive at the Alpha universe  
Just in time for everything to go to shit.  
I bet you will never guess  
that everyone’s secret plan  
was to murder the others!  
John is alive, as is Rose.  
Roxy is safe, and Dirk is too.  
Libra is alive, if only for now  
and of course Caliborn and Bec Noir are  
still around to terrorise everyone.  
Most everyone else is dead  
The name for this particular event  
is ‘Game Over’  
but that does not mean  
that the story is done  
Not yet.  
Because Libra has a plan  
that does in fact involve murder  
but not the way you might expect…


	5. Act 4

If you are reading this  
it means you are strong enough  
to be sticking with us as we summarise Homestuck.  
I am so, so proud of you.

Anyway.  
So, Libra has a plan  
that involves skating in on rocket shoes  
and screaming at John to FIX THIS.  
Fortunately, John has recently done something incredibly dumb  
Namely, sticking his hand inside the weird thing  
and thus gained the ability  
to retcon the narrative.  
John, being John, has no idea how to fix it.  
Planning is hard.  
It’s hard, and nobody understands.  
So Libra leaves him some instructions  
on how exactly to fix this.  
(This is, in fact, the best plan in the entirety of multiple universes  
so clearly Libra does, in fact, understand all too well  
the perils of murder-based planning.)

Many years ago  
(but not that many)  
John tweaks a few things  
resulting in Capricorn getting caught  
at being a dumb clown traitor  
saving Scorpio from a just death  
so she can save everyone else  
back in the modified present  
by putting Jane and Jade to sleep.  
You were expecting a more complex plan?  
Something involving murder?  
Not this time.  
It didn’t have to be  
a Federal fucking issue  
and perhaps  
that is why it worked.

This brings us to the Horsepause  
where we sit today  
Reading Paradox Space  
and waiting for the resumption  
of normal service  
so we can learn how this tale  
of the human emotion called friendship  
comes to its close.

So the lesson of the story is  
(if indeed there is a lesson at all)  
is don’t read Homestuck.  
It’s trash, and you will become Homestuck Trash.  
Or it would be the lesson  
if it weren’t already too late.  
 **You are already here.**


End file.
